They would have kept the new innocency of their souls, no doubt, had the forty-day flood been a week shorter. During the first week of the flood the loggers were excited about the strange rain which was streaming up from China, then the muddy foaming waters which filled the valley below their place of refuge became a monotonous sight. Some of them began to tease the buffalo boys, and others played with the blond wolves, the high-behinds, the tigermunks and the other animals which Paul Bunyan had brought into the cookhouse. But these wild creatures had been so frightened by the flood that they would not learn tricks. Paul Bunyan invented picture cards for his men and the games of poker, rummy and cribbage; but the bunkhouse cranks were so violent at play that it had to be given up. Then the loggers could only tell stories, and sing and jig for amusement. During the last week of the flood, camp stories being told out, the loggers remembered women; and they became so interested in songs and stories about them that they were sorry when the flood was over and a spring day dawned on a new green land. This morning Paul Bunyan called, “Roll out or roll up!” but he got no answer. The surprised leader stopped and looked into the cookhouse. He saw Shanty Boy and three other bards standing with their arms over each other’s shoulders. The quartet was singing: “Here I sit in jail, with my back to the wall; And a red-headed woman was the cause of it all!” “Red-headed woman?” Paul Bunyan stroked his beard in perplexity. “Woman? I think I have heard that word before. Woman ... m-m-m-hmm ... now I remember. Those creatures so strangely fascinating to plain men. I doubted their existence. At any rate, I hope we never meet with any. I have had difficulties enough from ideas, poetry and floods. My loggers shall now have hard work again and forget these tempting memories.” Once more he roared the noble call to labor. The loggers heeded it this time, and they came out smiling blushingly. Thereupon Paul Bunyan made them a straightforward speech, beguiling phrased, however; and when it was done the loggers thought only of their work tools and of the handsome, odorous timber which covered the new slopes below them.